Outer space

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin sued the U.S government over NASA's decision to award a $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to Elon Musk's SpaceX.

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Blue Origin said its lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Friday is "an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA's Human Landing System."

High-resolution photos were taken by the American observation satellite WorldView-2 from Maxar from an altitude of 770 km.

High-resolution satellite images of large-scale forest fires in the Turkish resorts of Bodrum, Manavgat and Marmaris have been published by European Space Imaging.

The US Government denied a protest by Jeff Bezos' private space company, Blue Origin against NASA's decision to award Elon Musk's SpaceX a 2.9-billion-dollar contract to take the next two US astronauts to the moon.

In April, NASA awarded the contract, part of a programme aiming to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, to SpaceX over Blue Origin and Dynetics.

A newly arrived Russian science lab briefly knocked the International Space Station out of position on July 29 when it accidentally fired its thrusters.

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The collection of samples, which NASA marked as a turning point, will begin in the next two weeks. "We are on the threshold of a new era of planetary science and discovery", said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters.

Jeff Bezos blasted into space on July 20 on his rocket company's first flight with people on board, becoming the second billionaire in just over a week to ride his own spacecraft.

The Amazon founder was accompanied by a hand-picked group: his brother, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands and an 82-year-old aviation pioneer from Texas - the youngest and oldest to ever fly in space.

British billionaire Richard Branson was due on July 11 to climb into his Virgin Galactic passenger rocket plane and soar more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert in the vehicle's first fully crewed test flight to the edge of space.

Two astronauts conducted China's first tandem spacewalk on July 4, working on the outside of their nation's new Tiangong station in orbit around Earth.

Three Chinese astronauts blasted off in June, docking at the space station where they are to remain for three months in China's longest crewed mission to date.

It also wants to send an astronaut to the International Space Station

Under bright-blue morning skies, China launched its first crewed space mission in five years on June 17, sending three science-minded military pilots rocketing to a new orbiting station they're expected to reach around midafternoon.